


Event Horizon

by ipreferfiction



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Death, Gen, Order 66, POV Third Person, Post-Order 66, The Author Regrets Having Emotions, no beta we die like men, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23915677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ipreferfiction/pseuds/ipreferfiction
Summary: There is a universe, somewhere, where Ahsoka Tano is happy. Where she has not felt the genocide of her people, where she has not seen children slaughtered for something they are born with, where she has not lost her brother to the darkness.But it is not this one.Ahsoka after Order 66 as she deals with the loss of everything she has ever known.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	Event Horizon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [2manybooks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/2manybooks/gifts).



> So technically I haven’t seen The Clone Wars past mid-season 3 or so. I know what happens, but I’m not familiar with exact details, which is part of the reason this is very vague. Obviously, I haven’t seen season 7 so I have no clue how Order 66 will actually play out with Ahsoka.  
> Yeah. This is vague. Enjoy!  
> I’m on Tumblr under the same username; come say hi.

There is a universe in which Ahsoka Tano is a Jedi knight, sworn to serve the Republic and the galaxy. There is a universe in which she wields two green lightsabers with stunning precision, in which she becomes one of the greatest members of the Jedi Order.

It is not this one.

There is a universe, somewhere, where Ahsoka Tano is happy. Where she has not felt the genocide of her people, where she has not seen children slaughtered for something they are born with, where she has not lost her brother to the darkness.

But it is not this one.

In this universe, Ahsoka is a bleeding, terrified girl who is forced to listen as thousands of Jedi are cut down across the galaxy, as children are slaughtered on the temple steps, as the people who were once her family are massacred. She feels every death, every final moment, all the desperation and fear, the betrayal and the rage.

The Empire never calls the purge what it is. The Jedi fall. That is what is said, more often than not: the Jedi were traitors, and they fell. There are very few people who know the truth. There are even fewer who know the whole of it, and Ahsoka is not one of them. She knows that her former master vanished in the darkness and the screams. She knows that the Temple burned, and she knows that Padmé Amidala died with the Republic that she loved so much.

Here is what she does not know: that Anakin’s Fall preceded that of the Republic. That Anakin Skywalker turned his back on every oath, every promise he ever made for half a chance to save his wife. That Anakin went dark not because he died, but because he rose. Rose a Sith. Rose Darth Vader. Rose the Emperor’s greatest weapon, the man who murdered Jedi younglings on his master’s orders.

Here is what Ahsoka does not know: Obi-Wan fought his brother on Mustafar. Obi-Wan was with Padmé as she gave birth to the twin suns that are Anakin’s children. Obi-Wan lived and took the boy to Tatooine and gave the girl to the rulers of Alderaan. Obi-Wan was with Padmé when she died.

And here is what Ahsoka does not know: years later, Luke Skywalker will take up his father’s sword and save the galaxy. Leia Organa will watch her planet die and swear on its ashes to bring freedom to what was once the Republic. Obi-Wan Kenobi will die on the Death Star under Darth Vader’s lightsaber, and when he does, his brothers and sisters will be waiting for him in the living Force. And one day, one day very far off, the Jedi will return.

But Ahsoka Tano can take no comfort in what she does not know. She is a child still, young and frightened and so terribly alone. She is one speck in the vacuum of space, one tiny pinprick who knows with cold certainty that she is one of the last. And as she flees the wreckage of her childhood and her past, as she leaves behind even her lightsabers, she feels too numb to even breathe.

 _Execute Order 66._ The chips. The clones. Her family. All gone, all destroyed by a man Anakin trusted. She feels the minds of her men slip away and vanish as one, and then it hits her like a tsunami. The pain. The anguish. The betrayal. The death.

And Anakin, vanished in an instant, all his brightness disappearing as the Force screams the galaxy apart.

The ache in her chest just keeps growing, no matter how much she tries to tamp it down. If she were a true Jedi, she would be able to let go—but how can she release this into the Force when the Force is even worse? It is not wounded; it is itself a wound, a gaping hole where once there were so many there to fill it. She doesn't even have its lifeline, then, not anymore, not when it’s a void filled with the last thoughts of the Jedi as they fell.

Togruta go barefoot to connect them to Shili. Ahsoka embraces that connection, embraces the way her tender soles burn and ache and the way that calluses build up, as slowly as they rose on her palms a lifetime ago. If she has nothing else, she has the ground beneath her.

Her fingers itch for the familiar hilts of her lightsabers. She ignores it, and she ignores the mournful song of the Force, and she ignores the way her hands sometimes shake when she picks up a machine part that reminds her too much of smooth metal cylinders humming with the Force. Oh, she misses them with a passion so strong she can hardly breathe, but she pushes all that to the side and tries so very hard to survive. She does not live. She does survive.

Here she stands at the end of the world, the ground beneath her feet cool on her toughened soles, her hands empty and the Force surrounding her like a cloak, like a second skin. Ahsoka Tano, former padawan, former Jedi—a girl strong and brittle, all durasteel and fragile glass. This is not the universe in which she will be content, without the shadow of a generational sorrow heavy on her back, but this is a universe in which the hole in her chest might begin to close.

One day, sooner than she expects, two kyber crystals will call out to her from the broken remnants of an inquisitor’s lightsaber. She will build twin lightsabers once more, and her scraped and callused palms will welcome the almost unfamiliar feeling. She was not a Jedi, and she will not be a Jedi, but the Force will welcome her nonetheless.

It has been so long since the Force spoke to her with any feeling other than loss. So many Jedi dead, so many Jedi murdered; why was she granted the right to survive? Why was she, not even a knight before she left the Order, the one who made it out of the bloodshed alive? Why is she so terribly alone?

Here Ahsoka Tano stands at the end of all things. The Jedi Temple is ash on the wind of Coruscant. Thousands of lives have been snuffed out in an instant, and millions more erased without a second thought to serve a purpose that would horrify them, if any part of them remained to be horrified. Children are dead, and the Empire rises on the broken backs of everyone who died to see it built. Ahsoka’s closest friend lies somewhere among them.

She has survived before. She will live through this last great loss. She will live, and she will see the Empire fall, and before that her heart will be broken once again. She is a warrior, and she will rise.

But right now, it takes all she is and all she has within her to make it through the dark and burning night.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m so sorry, Bells. I know you wanted happy stories. Order 66 has been haunting me since I watched Revenge of the Sith a month ago, so I dealt with the angst by writing even more of it.


End file.
